Taylor Kitsch is "Pumped" About the Trailer for John Carter of Mars
Quote:
Taylor Kitsch says he has just seen the trailer for John Carter of Mars. Could we be seeing it soon?
With all the hype surrounding this summers slate of CBM's, many have forgotten, or simply overlooked the fact that Director Andrew Stanton has already wrapped filming on the John Carter of Mars movie based on the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Although JCOM is not due out in theaters until March of next year, it sports an incredible cast of actors, in what should be at the very least, a visually stunning movie.
Taylor Kitsch who plays the title character in the film sat down with MTV News only yesterday and stated that although the film is a year away, he has had the opportunity to see the trailer.
"We're doing some fun little pickups right now. I saw the official trailer hours ago. [I'm] over the moon. We are just ... it's a special film. It's going to be a good ride. I'm pumped!"
"Man, I would love to get going and tell you everything about it. All I'll say is, good luck piecing it together. You're going to be like, 'How the f--- does this all fit together?' "
"And there's a lot of heart in it too, to say the least. Yeah, I'm excited about it."
Andrew Stanton's John Carter of Mars starring Taylor Kitsch, Willem Dafoe, James Purefoy, Mark Strong, Bryan Cranston and Lynn Collins is due out March of next year.
What a difference a name makes. Disney reps have confirmed to IGN that Pixar mastermind Andrew Stanton's first foray into live-action, John Carter of Mars, is now simply being called John Carter. Oh well.
Dark Horizons first reported the title change earlier today. Surely from a marketing standpoint, the new title is probably more attractive. But at the same time, something has been lost in the process -- the mystery and pulp wonder that would seem to be inherent in the work is no longer conveyed by the name.
Of course, the original Edgar Rice Burroughs book on which the story is based was actually called A Princess of Mars. And there was no way in hell this would ever be called that, either.
don't like the title change-- that's like taking past films like
The Land That Time Forgot and Warlords Of Atlantis and naming them
"The Land" and "Warlords"
don't like the title change-- that's like taking past films like
The Land That Time Forgot and Warlords Of Atlantis and naming them
"The Land" and "Warlords"
Got to agree John Carter just sounds like an average movie named after the title character when you take Mars out.
You know I was really baffled at first as to way in the world they would do this, and then it dawned on me that...
this is probably not taking place on Mars anymore, because our perception of that planet has changed dramatically since the original novel debuted in 1917.
The problem with the title being only "John Carter" is that it could mean anything. It sounds like it's a spinoff of E.R., which featured Noah Wylie as Dr. John Carter for many years.
And even if one doesn't make the E.R. association, "John Carter" sounds like a cop or one of the many characters that have been played by Denzel Washington.
And there was a book called "John Carter of Mars" published in 1964, but it comprised two short stories: "John Carter and the Giant of Mars", which was a children's story actually written by Burrough's son and "Skeleton Men of Jupiter", which is generally considered to be unfinished.
The problem with the title being only "John Carter" is that it could mean anything. It sounds like it's a spinoff of E.R., which featured Noah Wylie as Dr. John Carter for many years.
However, it also has "Mars" in it, and Disney and Mars haven't....quite been fortunate with each other lately. (Think the planet needs moms, or something.)
Quote:
Of course, the original Edgar Rice Burroughs book on which the story is based was actually called A Princess of Mars. And there was no way in hell this would ever be called that, either.
Between this and "Tangled", as one poster on another board put it, "The Disney-correct title would have to change it to 'A --- of --- '"
JOHN CARTER Video Blog: Reaction to Footage, the Teaser Trailer, and a Lot More
Quote:
John Carter can’t stand up. When he does, he falls over. Finally, after putting in a lot of effort, he’s able to take a step and he jumps about thirty feet. He’s stunned. Looking around, he has no idea where he is and what’s going on. Of course, if you were transported to Mars from the 19th Century, you’d also have a tough time figuring out what just happened.
What I just described is part of a scene from director Andrew Stanton’s (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) first live-action movie, John Carter. Based on the celebrated novel, A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter is Disney’s first film in what they’re hoping is a franchise starter and based on what I saw, it just might work. The reason I know this is the other week I got to go to San Francisco (along with some other online reporters) to see the first teaser trailer, watch some footage, and interview Stanton for almost an hour. I learned so much about this very cool looking film.
Before going any further, since many of you might not be familiar with John Carter, here’s the official synopsis:
From Academy Award–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands. The cast also includes Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston and Thomas Haden Church.
Anyway, with John Carter set to hit theaters in March of 2012, this week marks the beginning of Disney promoting the film. In a few days they’re going to release the teaser trailer online, and it’ll be attached to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in theaters. While I didn’t think the teaser was perfect, it will give you a taste of the film.
Though I had some issues with the teaser, the footage I saw from the movie and the concept art I saw later in the day made me think Disney has something very cool on their hands. And if the film is a hit, they’ve already optioned two more of the books and they’re planning on making a trilogy. So if you’re a John Carter fan, fingers crossed audiences respond to the material.
While I’d love to give you a detailed write up of the scenes they showed us, we were asked to avoid complete scene breakdowns. However, they were totally cool with us reporting on what we thought and what we did that day. So after leaving our lunch with Stanton and producer Jim Morris, Quint (from AICN) and Peter (from Slashfilm) and I recorded a video blog at the Oakland airport. If you’re curious about John Carter, I promise you’ll learn a lot by watching the video below. As usual, it’s time indexed so you can watch the parts that interest you.
And when you’re done, I suggest clicking here and reading or listening to the hour long interview with Stanton. I’ve also listed the “20 Things to Know About John Carter.” I really think this movie has the potential to be something special, and something I’ll want more of…
* 00:00 Introduction
* 00:25 What is John Carter?
* 01:20 Andrew Stanton and Pixar’s “involvement”
* 02:00 First part of a potential franchise
* 02:30 Talking about the footage
* 04:30 The White Ape sequence
* 05:25 Shooting in the deserts of Utah rather than green screen stages
* 06:00 Performance Capture for the Martians will actually just be reference for “Animation”
* 06:45 Drawings of John Carter from the filmmakers/screenwriters childhoods
* 07:55 Not being 100% faithful to the books
* 08:30 Giving depth to the simple archetype characters
* 09:20 The uber realism environment vs. big fantastical
* 10:00 Almost steampunk-like props and environments
* 10:30 Casting attractive non-star male and female leads
* 11:10 Reaction to the teaser trailer
* 11:35 Sci-fi that doesn’t look like its sci-fi, and changing the title from “John Carter of Mars” to “John Carter”
* 12:30 What the teaser should have been, and how they should promote the film
* 14:00 They need to sell the book’s legacy, or the movie might feel derivative
* 14:45 Will be released in 3D, a completely different post-3D process
* 15:50 Animation and CG usually looks fantastic in 3D
* 16:40 Quint expresses doubts about the film in his bottom line reaction
* 17:20 Peter has mixed feelings, was amazed by the White Ape sequence, but didn’t see enough
* 18:15 Frosty was more excited seeing the Concept art than he was the footage, agreed that we didn’t see enough
* 18:55 Trailer song: Peter Gabriel covering Arcade Fire
* 19:20 Andrew Stanton is an absolute movie nerd
* 20:00 Stanton really cares about the property, this is his passion project
20 Things to Know About JOHN CARTER; Plus an Awesome Interview with Director Andrew Stanton and Your First Look at a Tharks
Quote:
“I’ve tried really hard to capture what I thought was universal and timeless about this book that is above and beyond the genre itself.” – Andrew Stanton
After hearing director Andrew Stanton (WALL·E, Finding Nemo) talk passionately for almost an hour about his first live-action movie, John Carter, in San Francisco last week, I’m convinced he’s the right person to finally bring Edgar Rice Burroughs celebrated novel to the big screen. Not only is he a lifelong fan of the material, but his behind the scenes team is packed wall-to-wall with lifelong Burroughs fans. In addition, while some filmmakers might cling to the source material and treat it like a Bible that they refuse to diverge from, Stanton is smart enough to know that some things that read great on the page won’t translate to the screen, though that doesn’t mean a Thark won’t still be a 9 to 10-foot tall green alien with 4 arms and tusks.
But let me back up a second.
With Disney releasing the first teaser trailer for John Carter later this week (it’ll be on Harry Potter and also online), today marks the very beginning of the Studio’s campaign to promote the movie. To help make that happen, they invited a few online reporters to Northern California to watch some footage, the teaser trailer, and also speak with producer Jim Morris and director Andrew Stanton. If you’ve been looking forward to John Carter, or you’re just a fan of Stanton and curious about his next movie, hit the jump for 20 things to know about the movie and an awesome interview (both audio and transcript) with the great director.
Before going any further, if you’re curious what I thought about the footage Stanton showed us (including the teaser trailer) and my thoughts on the movie, you should click here.
Since I know many of you won’t have the time to read an hour long interview, I’ve taken some of the highlights and created the “20 Things to Know About John Carter.” However, I know many of you will want to read the entire conversation and listen to the audio, so further down the page you’ll find the audio links and full transcripts. But before going any further, for those of you that have never heard of John Carter, here’s the one liner:
John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to mysterious and exotic planet Mars, becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions and discovers that the survival of the planet and its people rests in his hands.
Here’s the full synopsis:
From Academy Award–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.
While it might have taken a long time to get to the big screen, I really think Stanton’s film has the potential to be awesome. John Carter hits theaters in March of 2012.
20 Things to Know About John Carter
* Stanton and Co. worked really hard on the first trailer. They kept telling Disney it wasn’t good enough. They wanted to nail it on the first go-around. The trailer includes Peter Gabriel doing a cover of an Arcade Fire song.
* The film will most likely be PG-13 as there are battles and dismemberments; things not suitable for small children.
* Stanton says he most cares about whether this will be one of those movies people show their grandkids. He’s much more focused on making the film great and lasting rather than just having a good opening weekend.
* Even though Disney will most likely wait until they can see how well John Carter does before moving ahead with the sequels, Stanton says he’s not waiting for a greenlight to get moving creatively.
* In comparing the Pixar process of constantly reworking, scrapping, and re-doing the film until it’s great to making a live-action film, Stanton says he had to work with less reshoots. Even still, Disney was asking why he needed so many reshoots.
* Stanton’s initial introduction to John Carter of Mars was in the comic-book form in the 1970’s. Through the comic, he discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books and started reading all of them in junior high school.
* Disney has optioned the rights to make three John Carter films. If the first one does well and starts a franchise, Stanton wanted to ensure that the films would be interlinked, but still independent from one another. Saying that, he’s dropped a few things in the first film that can be used in the sequels.
* Stanton approached the adaptation like a rewrite. He broke the book down, looked at it objectively, and then saw what came back together. He said he tried to find what he thought was universal and timeless about the sci-fi genre in order to make the film accessible to everyone.
* Stanton wanted to approach the film realistically. He wanted to look at it as a period film about a period we just don’t know about.
* The film was shot on location in Utah, and a large percentage of what we’ll see on screen has actually been photographed. They’ll use CG to add set extensions.
* When casting two of the main characters who are Tharks—Willem Dafoe and Samantha Morton—Stanton went with “his Pixar gut” and chose his actors based on their eyes, their voice and their acting ability.
* Tharks-John-Carter-imageIn doing motion-capture for the Tharks, the actors had to wear a grey suit with face cams and walk around on stilts in the 100-degree heat.
* The film wasn’t shot in 3D and Stanton says he had no say over whether the film was 3D or not. Disney is post-converting to 3D. Producer Jim Morris says because there’s so much CG in the film, a lot of the elements of stereoscopic 3D are inherently in place. They pulled in Pixar’s stereographer Bob Whitehill to do 3D work on John Carter.
* Stanton confirmed that Edgar Rice Burroughs, who appears as a character in the book, is also a character in the film.
* Stanton says he wasn’t too keen on going to Comic-Con because he’s not a fan revealing things so far from the film’s release. He also didn’t want to get lost in the noise at Comic-Con, he wants people to be able to focus on John Carter and enjoy it.
* One of the big challenges for Disney – and even the filmmakers – is that a lot of John Carter has been used in films ranging from Avatar to Star Wars. So how do you explain to people that John Carter came first and everything was lifted from a hundred year old book. Stanton said, “so much has been derived from this book over 100 years that my first dilemma was, “How the hell do you make this and not look like you’re being derivative yourself?”
* Filmmakers for almost eighty years have tried to bring John Carter to movie screens. During the 30′s it was almost done as an animated movie and then “Ray Harryhausen tried to do it in the ’50s and then John McTiernan almost did it in the ’80s and they just didn’t have the technology or the means to figure how to translate it visually.”
* While some fans might be upset that “of Mars” was dropped from the title, Stanton says “not everybody’s into sci-fi. I’ve tried really hard to capture what I thought was universal and timeless about this book that is above and beyond the genre itself. I don’t want to exclude anybody from a wrong first impression assumption about this movie or this property, so I didn’t want to lie and say it isn’t what it is, so I said, “Let’s sell the character that we put all our efforts towards.” Believe me, Mars is going to come into this thing, title and everything, before this whole journey’s over. You’ve just got to be patient. There was a grand design to all this thing.”
* Another issue Stanton had to overcome was “How do I deal with these archetypal characters? Character was probably my biggest focus on the project: I needed to dimensionalize these heroes. Carter’s pretty much a do-gooder for most of these books; he can be very vanilla, very 2-dimensional at times. Dejah was too much of a damsel in distress. You’ve got to remember, they were the fresh adventure ideas at the time that became tropes. Could I make both characters and made a little bit more of them, but still retain what I felt was an innate sense of justice in Carter and the strength of Mars at the core of Dejah?”
* Most of the effects work is being done in London. For a year now, Stanton starts his day meeting with them remotely. While it’s morning in San Francisco, it’s the end of the day in London and they watch dailies for an hour or two.
Last edited by WyldeMan45; 07-11-2011 at 07:10 PM.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
don't like the title change-- that's like taking past films like
Point was that it doesn't jibe with the name change news. 
Linear Mode
